


Apotheosis

by inkreservoir



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/F, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2018-11-09 12:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11104275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkreservoir/pseuds/inkreservoir
Summary: A few years after Rem sacrifices herself to save Misa, she's reborn as a human: Jihyun Kim.





	1. Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome to Apotheosis, a Mystic Messenger and Death Note crossover centering around Rem, the shinigami, and the (previously) enigmatic V from the game by Cheritz. This fic was inspired by a popular and well-loved trope in Death Note fanfiction, wherein after a human Death Note user dies, that Death Note user is reborn as a shinigami. _Apotheosis_ is essentially a reversal of that concept.
> 
> Warnings, tags, and ratings on this fic are subject to change, and more will be added as they become relevant to the story. Feel free to send me an [e-mail](mailto:inkreservoirs@gmail.com), a [non-anonymous ask on Tumblr](http://inkreservoir.tumblr.com/ask), or a [direct message on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ink_reservoir) with any specific questions or concerns you may have.
> 
>  **Please note:** I started writing this fic before the release of the V route in _Mystic Messenger_. After careful consideration, I've decided to redact the entire route for this fic, and adhere only to the canon information that we were given prior to the V route's release. For that reason, characters such as V's family are OCs, and nearly all of his backstory is purely AU material. Thank you for understanding.
> 
> **For readers who are only familiar with one of _Death Note_ or _Mystic Messenger_ :**
> 
>  **You do not need to have ANY knowledge of _Mystic Messenger_ prior to reading this fic.** Because the story starts with (literally!) V's birth, what relevant parts of the original story of _Mystic Messenger_ that are necessary to understand the fic will be explained within the story as they come up.
> 
> Death Note is a little trickier, but **I have provided a bullet-point summary of the relevant parts of _Death Note_ for your convenience in the [end notes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11104275/chapters/24778263#chapter_1_endnotes).** I will also include notes on names and terms from _Death Note_ that come up in each chapter in the end notes for that specific chapter. There will be many of these for the first few chapters, but the need for them will lessen considerably as the story continues.
> 
> **Be warned that in either case, this fic will contain major spoilers for both canons.**
> 
> Finally, I want to give my tremendous thanks to [jihyunkim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jihyunkim) for the ceaseless encouragement, hand-holding, and love for this monstrosity, and to my sister [Tesneem](https://twitter.com/shigi_no_stop), for always lending an ear when I'm suffering over the difficulties of Narrative, being the first reader of every story I tell, providing her insight, thoughts, suggestions, and feedback, and always being an amazing source of encouragement and support.

### Prologue: Rebirth

**Friday September 9th, 2011**

The tears streaming down her face are tangible, and that’s Rem’s first realization when she feels hands under her body lifting her up, small arms flailing. She can’t see anything; it’s the opposite of darkness but that never made a difference to Rem before, discerning eyes always able to make sense of her surroundings. Now there’s nothing but the sound of foreign voices, drowned out by her own cries.

She was ugly as a shinigami; gel oozing from her head that Misa once referred to as hair, as though anything of the human world could be flippantly applied to a shinigami without a second thought. The tall body of bones made Rem look as though she’d cobbled herself together from the spoils of a shinigami gamble, held together by swathes of grey like a corpse. The pink of her lips and face, the earrings she’d found and attached to her form, seemed only to mock her for her efforts. But everything about her now is soft, skeleton cushioned in flesh and smooth skin, and the person holding Rem breathes, “beautiful,” as she hands her to another human, a word Rem never imagined could be used to describe her.

The human woman says her name is Jihyun, and from then on everything is different.

Rem’s first urge is to find Misa, but this body is limiting, small, its motions awkward and imprecise. Rem has never had to _learn_ to maneuver herself before; she doesn’t remember how she came into existence in the shinigami world but she’s sure if floating were so arduous a process as dragging a tiny hand up to form a gesture is she wouldn’t have forgotten. Every human she’s come into contact with is large, so much larger than she is, only able to feel out fractions of them with her fingers where once she towered over them all, watched them from above instead of far below. She doesn’t cry much, and her parents note how quickly Jihyun goes quiet once he’s been provided with any sustenance he needs, sobs serving only as an unsophisticated venue for communication because he can’t yet form words. The need for any sustenance at all is another new experience; Rem can recall with detail in her mind answering the detective’s question about it by saying shinigami don’t need to eat food, but now she can hardly get enough of it, and still longs after it even when her small stomach is full. Sleep is worse, though—she dreams every night and always of Misa, the fair-haired girl who thought she could be close to God, lost and wandering and potentially in danger without Rem to protect her. Rem doesn’t know what other humans dream of, but if theirs carry this much weight as well she doesn’t know how they can bear it.

Jihyun’s parents are concerned about what they dub “insomnia” and debate taking him to see a doctor, but the plans to do so are never realized, as many of their plans aren’t. His mother is a painter, and his father sits very still with Jihyun in his lap while she recreates their likenesses on canvas, commenting every so often that Jihyun is a more patient model than his father is. Rem is uncertain that patience is an appropriate quality to ascribe to her, but in the shinigami world it’s not unheard of for one to sit still for hundreds of years, so in some capacity she understands.

What’s stranger than that is being called a model. Misa was one, and a popular one at that, though Rem doesn’t remember ever seeing someone paint her. People called Misa beautiful—angelic, even—and she was, or as close to the human concept of angels as possible anyway. Only Rem got to see her in her private life, exhausted from standing for hours for photos, her hair splayed out around her on the bed. It was blonde like no colour Rem knew in the shinigami world in all its mute darkness. Misa screamed the first time she saw Rem, terrified to be in the presence of a monster so hideous, so inhuman. Now people squeal when they see Jihyun, cooing over him in his mother’s arms and remarking on how he’s already so handsome. His eyes receive the most compliments, as well as his soft and fast-growing dark hair, and his parents are told that his skin seems to glow, the picture of health and youth. Rem is flustered by the attention but tries to receive it with grace, though it feels misplaced, like it’s not meant for her at all… and perhaps it isn’t. After all, what _purpose_ could there be to her resurrection? Rem fully anticipated to _die_ for Misa, watched her body flake away into the same glittering substance she saw Gelus crumble into in the shinigami world. Rem doesn’t know if Gelus returned to life as well, in the form of a human or otherwise, and with no way of identifying him it’ll be close to impossible to find out even if she tries. As for Misa… Rem knows when Misa’s death was set to occur before she killed the detective, but it’s difficult to say what number of years was added to Misa’s lifespan after Rem’s sacrifice.

Becoming attached to Misa and breaking the laws of the shinigami to save her made Rem a failure to her purpose, and indeed to her own existence. However, living now as a human child in the human world, Rem no longer knows what her purpose is. If Misa is still alive, Rem may have been resurrected to protect her once more. In this state, though, Rem is much weaker than Misa, and considering Misa’s short lifespan prior to Rem’s death and the fact Rem hadn’t killed many people in her final years, by the time Jihyun becomes strong enough to protect her Misa could already be dead.

Despite her clumsiness in mastering the human tongue, Jihyun’s parents are surprised with how quickly he learns to speak, and impressed again by his ease in learning to read before he’s even entered school. He’s not necessarily _extraordinary_ for a human his age, but he’s certainly ahead of other children in these respects. Writing, though, is another matter entirely. Of all the skills that humans learn, Rem expected this would come the most naturally, but as if by some cosmic joke for her failure to use the Death Note correctly, she can hardly write. Her hand shakes, the pencil refuses to steady, and no matter how carefully she scrutinizes a character to copy it, the symbols are indiscernible. Typing is easier, and as soon as Jihyun has learned to type, his parents give him free rein to peruse the Internet, leaving him alone in the living room with what they call a tablet (and what, by Rem’s knowledge of the human world, is decidedly nothing like what she knows a tablet to be) to entertain himself while they attend to their personal affairs. Misa once described the Internet as scary, filled with information that can be damning, but Jihyun’s parents don’t seem concerned, and Rem can carefully press the name of the one she fell for into a search bar, her own human heart pounding in her chest.

_Misa Amane._

She touches enter, and the first things to appear are small photos of Misa’s face across the top of the page. In almost all of them she has a sweet smile across her lips, energy in her eyes that are as blue as Jihyun’s in these photos, though that isn’t Misa’s real eye colour. She’s exactly as Rem remembers her, and she feels her throat tighten when she realizes she even remembers being there when at least one of these were taken.

Only one thing about Misa has changed, and that’s that, for the first time ever, Rem can’t see her lifespan. The red floating characters and string of numbers above Misa’s head were always a constant, a reminder that no matter what Rem does she can only delay Misa’s death, not stop it. Now there’s nothing but Misa and her bright expressions, Misa and her beauty untainted by the reminder of death, as though she might live forever.

Rem’s hand wavers a moment, tempted to look at more photos, to see if there are any where Misa looks older than she was when Rem left her, but she tears her eyes away from them. There is something she yet still must know, and Rem learned well from watching Misa the dangers of deluding oneself in love. Misa could never be eternal, but with Rem no longer a shinigami, that Misa at least survived is her only hope for meaning in this life.

Rem clicks on the article and holds her breath as the page loads, a foolish and whispered plea dying on her lips.

_Misa Amane (弥 海砂, Amane Misa, born December 25, 1984 – died February 14, 2011) was a Japanese fashion model and actress._

The tears streaming down her face are tangible, and that’s when Rem first realizes she truly has become human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Below is a bullet-point summary of the relevant parts of Death Note. I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum for this summary.**
> 
>   1. There exists a realm separate from the human realm called the shinigami realm, a rotting world inhabited by creatures called shinigami (gods of death).
>   2. Humans have fixed lifespans (i.e. fixed times of death) that cannot be altered without interference from the shinigami realm. Shinigami also have fixed lifespans.
>   3. Shinigami each possess a notebook called a Death Note, and any human whose name is written in the notebook shall die. When a shinigami uses a Death Note to kill a human, whatever time remained of that human's lifespan is then added to the shinigami's lifespan. (e.g. if a shinigami with ten years left to live killed a human who still had ten years to live, those remaining ten years would be added to the shinigami's lifespan, and the shinigami would then have twenty years left to live).
>   4. Shinigami possess what are called Shinigami Eyes, eyes that can see the names and lifespans of all humans floating above their heads.
>   5. Use of the Death Note can shorten the lifespans of humans, but also extend them. If a Death Note is used to kill someone who was about to murder another person, the would-be murder victim's life would be extended. Doing this on purpose is expressly forbidden for shinigami, and those who intentionally use the Death Note to lengthen the life of a human will die, and the remaining lifespan of that shinigami will be added to the lifespan of the human whose life they lengthened.
>   6. Death Notes can be dropped to the human realm and be used by humans. Human Death Note users do not gain the remaining lifespans of other humans that they kill. Humans do not possess Shinigami Eyes, although they can obtain them by making a deal with a shinigami (trading half of their remaining lifespan in exchange for Shinigami Eyes).
>   7. Rem was a shinigami in the original story of Death Note. After witnessing another shinigami die to save a human, Misa Amane, she gave Misa that shinigami's notebook. Rem grew to care for Misa, and eventually used her own Death Note to kill two people for Misa's sake. This resulted in Rem's death.
> 

> 
> Whenever terms or characters from Death Note are mentioned in this fic, I will include brief clarification in the notes for that chapter. Theoretically, at this point, you could read this fic without being familiar with either canon, but unless one were a huge fan of _me_ , I'm not sure why they'd do that.
> 
> Notes for this chapter:
> 
>   1. "The detective": L, known in the human world as "the world's greatest detective," and the one who investigated the case when humans started using Death Notes.
>   2. Gelus: the shinigami Rem saw die to save Misa.
> 



	2. Storge

### Part I: Beauty

**July 2015**

Meeting new people and not immediately knowing their names is an experience Rem will never be used to, the mid-conversation realization that she has no idea who she’s speaking to a surprising jolt every time. Jihyun’s parents introduce him to all manner of adults on the Sundays they visit church, and though the fact he is a child means he rarely has to address adults by name, even mentally keeping track of everyone is a demanding and seemingly impossible task. Trying to memorize names while a choir sings in the background is even more tedious.

Church is interesting. Rem already knows that heaven and hell don’t exist and is aware of some of the basics of human religion, but being made to sit still and listen to details about it from the mouth of a human, she can, to a certain extent, understand the appeal of such a concept. Shinigami likely wouldn’t go to heaven or hell even if those places did exist, especially as most of them don’t die, but it’d certainly be preferable to be in heaven with Misa if she could be than to be in the human world as one of them. Her mother and father seem to attend church more out of a sense of obligation than actual belief, but they don’t talk much about it or anything else to Rem and she finds attempts to converse fall short.

The other children at church don’t seem to pay much attention to what’s being said and their parents keep a close watch on them so they don’t speak to one another. From what Rem can tell, most of the people here are completely different from Misa, putting care and calculation into the words they speak that would never have given Misa pause. Their style of dress reminds Rem of the task force that investigated Kira; bland, formal, and mutely coloured. Yes, rather than Misa, the people who live near the Kim family and attend the nearby church are like Kyosuke Higuchi; overly concerned with maintaining a pristine façade and coating their words in pretense, barely managing to maintain a friendly air with one another because they all have hidden motives. The way it extends to how they treat their children is repulsive; Rem can see it in the slaps on the small hands, the forcible rebuttoning of clumsily undone collars too close to the neck, the glares that silence questions without a word and the subsequent apologies for a child’s impertinence to another set of parents doing the same with their own children.

Jihyun’s parents are different, more relaxed and uninterested in controlling him, though in the car on the ride back home his older sister makes it clear she doesn’t view their indifference as a good thing. Their parents are deeply engaged in an insular conversation about the church choir when Yunseo loudly demands to know whether or not they even care about their children. 

Their mother’s eyes widen in the rearview mirror, and their father’s head turns, eyebrows raised, to peer into the backseat. The sudden awareness that she’s being looked at makes Rem sink in her chair, though beside her Yunseo’s back doesn’t touch the seat, posture perfectly straight as she holds her father’s gaze. Yunseo is seventeen years old, has had thirteen more years than Jihyun to learn and understand what a parent should be to a child, and this isn’t the first time she’s become angry with them in Jihyun’s presence. She wears a shirt with buttons down the front and dark pants that suit the rest of the neighbourhood’s attire, the same sort of outfit she tends to wear anywhere else. She doesn’t spend much time with Jihyun, preferring to study or chat with her friends on the computer, but she always makes a point to greet him when she gets home from school, remind him to brush his teeth before he goes to bed, and clean both his dishes and her own after a meal.

“What makes you ask that?” their mother inquires after a beat of silence. Rem looks out the window to watch the passing cars.

“You didn’t give us a single look the entire time we were at church,” Yunseo says. “And now we’re in the car and you’re ignoring us, _again._ ”

Jihyun’s mother makes a noise as though about to speak, but Yunseo hammers on. “I was trying to talk to you and it was like you didn’t even hear me! When I talk to Ms. Chae, or Mr. Han, they actually look me in the eye and listen to what I’m saying, but my own parents don’t?”

“Yunseo,” their father murmurs. “Please lower your voice, you might scare Jihyun.”

Rem hears Yunseo’s hand smack the leather seat. “Don’t tell me to lower my voice or act like you care about scaring Jihyun!” she exclaims. “If you were really worried about him then you would watch him while we’re out and take care he’s not talking to strangers or about to do something that could hurt himself!”

Though Rem takes care not to put herself in harm’s way, Yunseo is always attentive of Jihyun when their family is out, herding him away from potential dangers even when they don’t realistically seem threatening in Rem’s opinion. Being watched so carefully can be unnerving, but when Rem thinks of the care she took in making sure Misa was always safe, it’s not so difficult to understand.

“You don’t pay any attention,” Yunseo fumes. “You just talk to each other and to your friends without any regard for what’s happening around you!”

Staring at the blur of colours on the road makes Rem dizzy, but she doesn’t take her gaze off it, focusing on the feeling of slight nausea to cast Yunseo and her parents’ voices into the background. It’s not a long drive from the church to their home, but the speed of the car as well as the amount of traffic makes it seem so, especially compared to how fast Rem used to be able to fly. They live in a quiet area, enclosed in a mountainous region with steep roads, every passing house enormous. It’s different from Higuchi’s apartment in a very tall building but boasts similar wealth, many of the other families owning multiple cars despite not really needing them. That Jihyun’s mother drives is an anomaly; most here don’t drive themselves anywhere and hire someone else to do it. The car itself is different too. Rem doesn’t know enough about cars to actually date it, but Jihyun’s parents haven’t changed their car since Jihyun’s birth and, from what Rem has heard in their conversations about it, likely had it long before then. The next-door neighbours, on the other hand, change their car twice a year.

Rem starts when Yunseo crashes back against the chair, head turning sharply to face her sister. Yunseo wipes a bloodshot blue eye with her sleeve, uncharacteristic tears wetting the cuff.

“Mr. Mun accepted my internship application for this summer,” she mumbles thickly. “And he’s going to sponsor half of my tuition costs when I start my semester next year. I haven’t even finished my last year of high school yet and he’s doing that for me.” She coughs, turning her face toward the window and away from Rem.

Their mother gasps. “But we told you _we’d_ pay your tuition!”

“And _I_ told _you_ I don’t want you paying a damn cent for me!” Yunseo retorts. Jihyun doesn’t know what a tuition is, or an internship, and whatever conversation Yunseo is referring to must’ve happened away from him because he doesn’t remember any of it.

“Please stop shouting,” Jihyun’s father’s hands are over his ears, no longer looking behind him. Jihyun’s mother pulls the car into the side garage of their house.

“Jeongwu, take Jihyun inside,” she instructs. “You can stay with him there, and Yunseo and I will—“

“I have nothing left to say to you,” Yunseo mutters, rattling the door handle back and forth, but her door is still locked.

“Please, Yunseo,” their mother says softly, and Jihyun can see the lines in her face are creased, watching her daughter in the mirror. “Let’s talk about this.”

Yunseo tries the handle one more time, then sighs. In her periphery, Rem can see her shrink away from the door. She folds her arms over her knees, slouching forward. “ _Now_ you want to talk?”

Jihyun’s father removes his seatbelt and opens the door.

Once he and Jihyun are inside the house, Jihyun’s father takes a deep breath, crossing their living room to sit on a large blue couch. The sun is shining outside, and through the enormous windows that cover the walls there is no sense of privacy from the outdoors. Rem brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and her father levels his gaze with hers seriously. 

“I’m sorry you had to listen to that, Jihyun,” he apologizes. “It must’ve been scary.”

Rem stiffens.

She has never been apologized to before. 

In the shinigami realm, the prospect that one could ever owe another an apology is virtually nonexistent, and other than beating another at gambling there were few things a shinigami could do to offend each other anyway. Once Rem came to Misa in the human world, people only wanted to use her if they interacted with her at all. It didn’t matter to Rem; she was of another kind from them and couldn’t experience the pain of betrayal the way humans felt it, so why should they apologize? Even when Misa explicitly ignored her request and told Light Yagami how shinigami are killed, Rem didn’t mind that she wasn’t sorry, even when Light Yagami later used that information to kill her, she never expected any remorse to be felt on her behalf. Ryuk laughed at Rem’s feelings, Higuchi treated her as though the only purpose for her existence was to listen to his disgusting thoughts. The detective wanted information from her and likely would’ve put Rem through the same torture he put Misa through if he were able and if it’d assist him in his goals. No shinigami or human truly cared for Rem, and she wouldn’t know what to do if someone ever did.

Now, Jihyun’s father looks at her, eyes trained intensely on her face, and Rem is unsure he or anyone else have ever looked at her with such genuine concern before, or even that the man sitting before her now has really looked at her before at all.

She doesn’t know what the right response is, so she says, “Thank you.”

For a moment, he’s still. Then he looks away from her and stands to his feet. “Thank you,” he repeats, or perhaps he says it back to her. Facing straight ahead, he walks away, down the hall into the room with the piano, and they say nothing more.

Rem wonders if Misa’s parents were like this, if their conversations with their daughter were so sparing too. Misa had an older sister as well, but Rem didn't learn about that until Thierry Morrello said so in the interview while Rem was still attached to Higuchi. When Light Yagami asked Misa why she was willing to sacrifice so much just to help him, she explained it was because Kira had avenged her parents. 

Will Rem grow to love her parents as much as Misa did? Should she? Yunseo doesn't think their parents care about them, but it wouldn’t be the first time Rem loved someone who didn’t love her in return. It may have been a mistake, the greatest mistake of her existence, but she doesn't regret it, and she'll never apologize for it, and perhaps she's even more foolish than Misa was for falling for Light Yagami, since Misa at least didn't _know_ she would die.

Rem hears music drift down the hall, or the beginning of music, stretching out for a few moments before stopping and starting again, the notes seeming to hesitate and interrupt each other. Jihyun’s father plays many instruments, but he always starts with the piano when he’s composing a new piece. Rem can see him in her mind’s eye, dark hair falling just slightly over his face, lips twisting when the key he hits feels off, and she wonders what the appeal of music could possibly be to someone like him, who hates noise so much he used to cry whenever Jihyun did, not out of empathy but because he couldn’t stand listening to it. Rem’s not sure if he’s tall, because everyone seems tall to her, but his eyes are pale green like the paint her mother uses for the sea. His features are gentle, the shape of his face reminding Rem a little of Touta Matsuda, and if Jihyun is beautiful by human standards it is no doubt in part due to his father.

His mother is the older of the two, streaks of grey in her brown hair that have been there as long as Rem has known her. Her eyes, a much murkier shade of brown than Misa’s were, are the only part of her face that could be described as gentle, cheeks reminding Rem of her own skeletal body from her prior shinigami form, but her smooth and angular jaw is prominent on Jihyun’s face too.

It’s strange to look like someone else; every shinigami Rem has seen was unique and distinct, nothing binding them to one another and no concept of family between them. The history of humans lives in their features, for better or for worse, families in this neighbourhood easy to identify as related even without knowing their names. Rem noticed that much even when she was still a shinigami, but if humans then reacted to being told they look just like their mother by rolling their eyes like Yunseo does, it wasn’t a subtlety Rem picked up on.

Jihyun’s sister is pointy too, though her hair is soft and her eyes are sharp like her father’s, blue like Jihyun’s, puffy and red when she pushes the door open later that day. Her mother, face barren as the shinigami world, trudges in behind her. Neither of them speak a word, though Yunseo shoots Jihyun a withering glare that Rem cannot begin to understand. Except for the uneasy sounds of the piano, the rest of the day is silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. One of the shinigami in Death Note, Ryuk, says that heaven and hell do not exist, and that instead, humans go to Mu (nothingness) when they die. I've adapted this and extended it to be the belief of most shinigami.
>   2. Kira: After the first Death Note was dropped in the human realm, the human Light Yagami started using it to kill criminals and others he deemed unjust with heart attacks. The name that the public attributed to the mysterious arbiter of death was "Kira," because it sounds similar to the English word "killer". 
>   3. Kyosuke Higuchi: A Death Note in Rem's possession was, at one point, given to a businessman, and Rem had to stay with him the entire time he had the notebook. She did not think kindly of him.
>   4. Ryuk: The first shinigami to drop his notebook in _Death Note_ , which ended up being picked up by Light Yagami. He thought Rem's love for Misa was absurd.
>   5. Misa's parents: Misa witnessed her parents be murdered in a burglary. When Light Yagami later killed that burglar as Kira, she came to worship him.
>   6. Thierry Morello: The real name of one of the Death Note characters who helped investigate Kyosuke Higuchi when he had the notebook. Part of the investigation included an interview with Misa, who mentioned she had a sister.
>   7. Light Yagami: The protagonist of _Death Note_. He was the first human to receive a Death Note in the story, and used it to kill criminals, hoping to eventually leave it full of only people he judged as good and become "the god of the new world." Because Misa had Shinigami Eyes and Light didn't, she convinced him to use her as a tool and date her despite him saying he didn't reciprocate her feelings.
>   8. Touta Matsuda: One of the detectives who investigated Kira.
> 



	3. I

**May 2016**

It's not her first week or even her first month at school when another student, not by his actions or anything he's said but by his mere presence, strikes Rem breathless. She's seen him before, in church, in class, but she never realized until now that she isn't the only person who spends their recesses outside alone. As if pushed away by some invisible force filling the air, he stands at the edge of the school courtyard; perhaps it's the same force that compelled Rem to wander off here in the first place. The tall and empty walls that should have diminished him with their size are inferior to the look in his eyes, ice and fire all at once, passionate scrutiny, and with a start this young boy reminds Rem not of her own downfall but of Misa's, the man she loved who used love like a weapon and turned a god to ash. It's too much memory for a boy so young, and when he turns that gaze on Rem in this soft, child's body and asks, "Why do you look at me that way?," Rem has spent enough time as a human to know that he is art.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asks, uncertain if she's disturbed him. He's a little shorter than Jihyun is, but it doesn't feel that way. The boy's eyes survey her up and down, appraising her with eyebrows arched, lips twisted for a moment in thought, before he shrugs and turns his face away.

"Do as you like," he tells her, and for a moment the command stupefies her, desperately searching in her mind for what exactly it is that she'd like to do so she can comply. Her eyes find her shoes, black and freshly shined the night before by Yunseo. The other boy wears similar ones of a slightly different style, his pointed at the front where Jihyun's are square, standard footwear for the compulsory school uniform. Rem hesitates, then raises her head again to look at his face.

"What's your name?" she asks, and the question feels too personal, a few characters on a page that could be the difference between life and death, a secret to be closely guarded yet is so easily taken away.

"You don't know it?" the boy questions, an overly critical crease in his forehead for someone his age. "We've been in the same class for two months and twelve days, we attend the same church, and we've visited each other's houses before, but you don't know my name?"

He speaks like he spends his free time reading the dictionary, a pastime Rem can't deny she's participated in herself before out of boredom, selective of his words in a way that's unnatural for his stature. She stares wide-eyed at him for his harshness. Human names and even faces are difficult, slipping in and out of her mind without a trace no matter how hard she tries, and she's tempted to ask how he can remember  _her_  name before she realizes he's not given any particular indication that he does.

"I suppose I've forgotten," she mumbles, allowing her language to slip back into the stiff formalness she was accustomed to as a shinigami to match the other's speech. She's surprised to find how unforced it feels, realizing for the first time that her quietness around most humans might be due to the amount of effort it takes to vocalize as they expect Jihyun to.

The other blinks, scowling but apparently unable to look away from her, and after a moment of contemplative silence he slowly utters, "My name is Jumin Han."

Jumin Han.

It's a name she's heard before, the Han part certainly is, in her parents' dinner conversations and dripping with bitter spite from Yunseo's lips. His family doesn't live far from where Jihyun's does, a large house with black panels that's more modern than most others in the neighbourhood, though the inside is more traditional than one might expect.

She repeats the name several times in her head, Jumin Han,  _Jumin Han_ , the words more precious than the other boy could realize, and somehow she knows that this time she won't forget.

"The conventional thing to do, at this point," the other says, startling Rem out of her thoughts, "would be to introduce yourself, but there's no need as I already know who you are."

She nods, her lips feeling stuck together, and though the boy is stern she finds herself taking his word for it easily, something about him exuding honesty and trustworthiness even while he rebukes her with his words. She feels she's somehow unearthed something, trespassed into a space she wasn't meant to be and struck gold, like the earrings she wore as a shinigami, like the pink paint she took from the human world. He doesn't seem bothered by her staring, though he doesn't meet her eyes, and for a moment Rem longs to stay like this, silently drinking in the details of this boy's world, a world that appears to be all his own, separate from the oversaturation and noise she's come to associate with the human realm. He doesn't interrupt her, completely still and with perfect posture, and she knows then that she was wrong in her initial assessment of him. This boy is better than Light Yagami, greater than Light Yagami, and if the gods fell for him it would only be natural, his effortless honesty making him worthy of it, with no need for deception or delicate maneuvering to make it happen. He emanates magnetism, seems almost composed of it, and it's a quality she thinks can't be taken from him, a fundamental of his being that makes him meant to walk this earth.

She tears her eyes away; too much, too much, and when she does he takes a step toward her and she finds herself breathless once more.

"Spend recess with me," he says, his right foot barely a few centimetres from hers, eyes full of intensity. She nods again, refusing to look away this time, and he remains for just a moment, holding her there in his world, before he moves back.

And then he smiles.

Muscles in his face relax, eyebrows lose their arch, his lips curve just barely upward, and he looks at her with a carefreeness she wouldn't have thought him capable of as the warm light of morning seems to envelop her from his face.

"Good," he says, motioning to a bench by one of the paths in the courtyard. "Should we sit? I think we'll like each other, Jihyun."

Rem knows he's right, and it's a strange feeling, unaccustomed to attention or her presence being  _wanted_ , and together they walk away from the towering wall.

**June 2023**

Jumin becomes a fixture in her life with ease, occupying a place she didn't know existed and fitting perfectly into it. The two of them are silent more often than not, but it's a different sort of silence than that she shares with her family, a silence that's whole instead of hollow, a silence that's full like a sponge with water, and while she can't tell if she herself contributes anything to that completeness, she knows Jumin does with his overwhelming presence. They don't speak because there's no need for words, and when the words do come they are easy, unedited in their clunkiness, too big for either of them and their children's bodies. She's half-tempted to tell him her history, to ask if he was a god once too, but otherworldly as he seems Rem knows there's something irrevocably human about him, the very thing that drew the likes of herself and Gelus to this world in the first place.

Rem's searches for gods who'd become humans are mostly fruitless, references to human descent almost invariably linked to Christianity. Typing in Gelus's name does nothing either, the other apparently uninterested in making himself known to other former shinigami, if he's even here at all. It's possible that if he too became human then he's in a completely different time period than Rem is, or a different timeline altogether. And there's also a chance he didn't become a human in the first place.

It's much easier to find references to the opposite, the concept of humans that become gods,  _deification_  or  _apotheosis_  as the process is called. Humans appear to be fascinated by the idea, and Rem supposes she can understand what the allure of power and eternity could be to people who never had them within their grasp. She too might find it enthralling, were the power she had not the power of death, and were the eternity she had not dependent on it. Her parents never ask what she's searching for, so she never has to hide it, though she likely could if she wanted to because Jihyun apparently inherited her talent for going unnoticed, though not through any ability to be literally invisible. He slips in and out of places almost without a sound, and those just realizing he's entered the room remark that he surprises them with his quiet. She doesn't broach the subjects she searches for with Jumin, either, though he'd undoubtedly be interested in the concept of descent from godhood, but he's too sharp and too perceptive for Rem to fully trust he wouldn't put the entire picture together.

He starts inviting her to his house, and though Jihyun is allowed to invite over anyone he wants, he's also allowed to go any place he wishes, and Rem prefers to be at Jumin's. The other boy's house is full of invisible people; kitchen staff and housekeepers that Rem rarely sees, going about their obligations to maintain the orderliness of the place. Jumin doesn't think twice about it, and soon neither does Rem, the novelty of being seen both unnerving and difficult not to enjoy. Jumin listens to her, and Rem knows that if she ever asked him to make her a promise he wouldn't break it, possessing a degree of respect for her that's totally foreign to her life.

Jumin's father is rarely home, though his mother always is, and Jumin makes a point to correct Jihyun when he refers to her as such, firmly informing her that the woman living in his house is  _not_  his mother. Rem gives him a questioning look, less aware of human customs than she expected, and Jumin says he'll explain it another time.

Jumin's insistence that he and Jihyun be alone most of the time is no discomfort to her, used to adults taking little interest in her life. Even when their parents get together for dinner, Jumin prefers that the two of them take off on their own as soon as the meal is finished, circling the perimeter of his garden or sitting on the rug in his bedroom.

"I thought you were looking forward to having dinner together with your father," Rem comments, purposely not phrasing it as a question so the other doesn't feel obliged to respond. Jumin leans back against the footboard of his bed, so large it could probably swallow him.

"I was," he says, tracing circles on his kneecap. Even outside of school, Jumin dresses as if in uniform. Jihyun wears a t-shirt and jeans, though Rem isn't sure whether or not they're expensive. "But his girlfriend is with him, and I don't like her."

"Oh," Rem says, and suddenly everything makes sense. She wondered why the woman who appeared to be Mr. Han's wife was so young, but time spent with Kyosuke Higuchi should've told her that this was normal for businessmen. Jumin's father seems so kind, though, she wouldn't have thought to connect the two even in spite of them having the same occupation.

"Mm," Jumin acknowledges. She watches him for a moment, wondering if he wants to elaborate, but he says nothing more so she doesn't press him. Jumin's bedroom is nice, a bit oversized but so is Jihyun's. Everything from the wooden floors to the bed to the armchairs on either side of the table in the middle of the room are white, the only exception provided by a fish tank that sits on top of the table, the fish swimming inside reflecting the sunlight with vibrant colours.

It's quiet for a long time, and Rem wonders for a moment why Jumin sits on the floor when his room has armchairs and a window seat, and she's trying to decide if that's too impolite to ask when she feels a weight press against her arm, eyes widening as she realizes Jumin has shifted to lean on her, just slightly, his dark hair falling on Jihyun's shoulder. The touch is unexpected, accustomed to her only contact being Yunseo's hand firmly grasping Jihyun's when crossing the street or in a crowded place.

"Jumin?"

Jumin stiffens, and Rem regrets it for a moment as he raises his head ever so slightly, then seems to change his mind and leans on Jihyun again.

"You know," he says softly. Jihyun waits. "I've never had a friend before."

This isn't surprising. Jumin is young, has hardly had enough time in the world for it to be confusing that he hasn't made friends before, but the word puts Rem on alert.

"Friend?" she echoes, and Jumin shifts off of her shoulder to engage her in a serious look.

"That's what we are, right?" he asks, and though his voice is steely the question is sincere, searching her face with his silver eyes for answers. "Friends?"

Rem returns his eye contact and for once wonders if Jumin feels her presence as strongly as she feels his, because he averts his gaze slightly to look at her nose instead of her eyes. It's a word Rem hadn't considered for them before. Friends… the weight with which Jumin spoke the word makes sense now, though Jumin himself wouldn't be able to understand it. He's a young boy with the body of a delicate child, only a few short years into school. Rem is ancient, lived for centuries without ever having a single friend, the closest perhaps being Gelus, but even then it was she who was fascinated by him, the other shinigami sharing no similar interest in Rem or anyone other than the human girl he watched. That, of course, was natural. And Misa could hardly be called a friend, care for her as much as Rem did.

But him… Jumin Han. He seeks out Jihyun's presence, remembers things about him that Jihyun doesn't remember about himself, hangs onto his every word even when they're clumsily put together and say nothing of importance. He's unselfish, doesn't only care for Jihyun to the extent that Jihyun can be useful to him, whether as a willing sacrifice or a soundboard. Jumin is considerate of Rem, gives her special attention that even her parents don't give her. His eyes are the only place that Rem holds any significance—that Rem  _ever_  held any significance.

"Yes," she breathes, and Jumin watches her, unwavering. "I suppose we are."

Jumin slowly nods, then shifts again, replacing his head against her shoulder once more. Silence overtakes the air, the distant sound of parents' voices downstairs drifting into the room from behind the closed door.

"Let's stay this way," Jumin murmurs, and Rem can hear in his voice that this time it's not a command.

It's a plea.

"We will," she says.

She hopes he can hear in Jihyun's voice that it's a vow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. Part of how Rem ended up dying for Misa was that Light used her love for Misa against her.
> 



	4. Permanent December

**December 2024**

The passing of time for humans feels much longer than it does for shinigami, and though Rem supposes the reason for this might simply be that shinigami have a more literal relationship with eternity, she thinks it’s perhaps more likely that it’s because shinigami never do anything. Living so idly, spending each day exactly as the day before, months and years become indistinguishable, such that one might blink (not blink, humans blink) and find a century has passed. There’s no sun or moon in the shinigami realm, just a dimly illuminating sheen to keep what scarce objects exist in that world visible. But then, Rem has been to many a human history class by now, knows that humans label scarce existences as _resources_ , that more can be made from what little is already there. Shinigami share no such creativity, and the longer Rem thinks of the world she used to occupy the more she can come to understand Ryuk, despicable as she may still consider him to be. Even as he derided her for her failure to _act like a shinigami_ , she knows he too must have believed that humans have something _more_ than the two of them did.

Jumin in particular seems always full of ideas, in class or pointing through windows as the pair of them circle the shopping district, thoughts on how the architecture of particular buildings could have been altered, how empires might have _kept_ their power had they done one thing or another differently. Rem knows he learns some of this way of thinking from the business classes he attends, tutors and exclusive after-school programs paid for by his father in hopes that Jumin may one day succeed him as the president of C &R International, the company founded by his own grandparents. But most of Jumin’s way of thinking is his own, spending time in the library learning about subjects that no business tutor would ever tell him to study and finding ways to turn them into projects, writing each idea and a brief outline in various identical bound notebooks, purple and manufactured by the same brand under his family’s company title.

Rem doesn’t consider herself to be much more or less innovative now than she was as a shinigami, though she’s a good enough listener and quick enough thinker that Jumin consults her on his various conceptualizations, as if Jihyun were some kind of authority with any capacity to assess the products of his more intelligent, inventive, and knowledgeable friend’s mind. She wonders what Jumin would think if he knew that Jihyun had had millennia of opportunity to learn the secrets of the world and at the end of it came away with less knowledge than Jumin had acquired in his fourteen years of life.

Her friend is framed by the classroom window behind him, large flakes of snow drifting slowly to the ground. The changing seasons are perhaps the only things that make time feel it’s passing by quickly in this world, frost creeping across windows before Rem’s even registered that summer has ended. Jihyun’s parents become all but invisible in the wintertime, using the snowfall as an excuse to remain indoors when they’re at home, locked up inside their studio. This year, they don’t even exit for food, having bought a studio refrigerator to make it more convenient for them to remain working all day. Winter is also a time for global exhibits and performances, the duo travelling the world with art and sheet music to be seen by all except their son. The empty house is unnerving without even the sound of piano notes to keep him company, and so nearly every year Jihyun spends Christmas with Jumin’s family, partaking in their dinner and visits to the church for his own mother’s annual concert before being swept up in other festivities. Jumin complains about the company chairman, but Jihyun is grateful that he lets him spend so much time with their family, that he sets aside a dinner once a year for his son.

The other part of their celebrations is letter writing, the only idea between the two of them that has ever been Jihyun’s. Jumin had been expressing his personal disdain for the traditions of Christmas—Rem was listening, she had nothing personal against the holiday other than that she could hardly be considered Christian—complaining that it’s simply a capitalist scheme for civilians to spend all their money on corporate goods and then all of January scrambling in debt to the banks. Jihyun doesn’t really see how any of this affects Jumin specifically, as his family owns a large company and Jihyun doubts buying expensive gifts is much of a strain on him, but he’d eventually confessed his real reason for broaching the subject at all: despite his contempt for the traditions, he still wanted to give a gift to his best friend as per custom, and couldn’t think of anything that could be bought with money that didn’t make him want to retch at the thought.

The suggestion itself was a joke, a quote straight from Misa’s mouth from before Jumin was even born: “Well, it’d be best if you wrote me a love letter, of course.”

But Jumin didn’t laugh, rather fixed Jihyun in a serious look with his eyebrows drawn down, “A Christmas letter, huh.”

Rem quickly tried to recover, but Jumin made up his mind with a firm nod. “That settles it, then. And I expect you to write me one back, you know.”

“But my handwriting…” Rem reminded him in faint protest, and Jumin seemed to straighten even higher than his regular posture, a feat Rem had seldom imagined possible.

“I can read it.”

Five years later, Jihyun struggles against his urge to retrieve a half-finished letter from his bag as Jumin explains to him his vision for the project they’ll be working on as partners. Jumin’s dark hair against the backdrop of white snow, the navy sweater vest he wears over his uniform adding colour to the monochromatic world already superior to the shinigami realm in its starkness—it’s difficult not to want to write about it when it’s the only thing she’s felt inspired by in the last week.

“Jihyun.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, turning her attention to the diagram he’s drawn and passed over to her. His lines are so clean, always insisting on using a ruler though he can draw perfectly straight lines even without one.

Jumin waits, and Jihyun studies it carefully, owing him at least that much for failing to pay attention. “… That looks good,” she finally says, as if she would’ve said anything else either way.

Jumin nods and takes the paper back. “Then, you’re all right with doing the drawings?”

“…Hm?”

“Well, we’re making a poster,” he elaborates. “It’ll need some kind of visual element, and your mother is the famous painter Seonho Kim, so you’re better qualified than I am.”  Rem stares at him, and Jumin cracks a smile. “No? Well, I was teasing you, anyway.”

Rem prefers Jumin’s concept of teasing to Misa’s. At least Jumin could only kill Jihyun with anxiety about trying to hold a pencil steadily enough to make shapes.

“I was thinking the poster will look more professional with actual photos instead of drawings, anyhow,” Jumin says. “Since it’s about winter tourism in Korea I think now would be a pertinent time to take them.”

“Pertinent,” Rem echoes.

“It means suitable.”

“Yes, I know.”

Jihyun smiles and Jumin rolls his eyes before continuing, “Since you’re so preoccupied with what’s outside the window instead of with listening to me, I thought it’d make sense to leave the job of taking the photos to you.”

Rem feels her cheeks heat at Jumin’s deadpan tone and glances away. She’s taken photos on phones before, because Jihyun supposedly has a face that makes people feel comfortable asking him to do so in public when they’d like a group image, but taking her own photos in the human world isn’t something that’s really occurred to her before. Photography reminds her of Misa, of photo shoots, of the amount of attention Jihyun used to receive as a baby that he’s hardly received any similar measure of since, though strangers still stop him on the street to tell him he’s handsome.

“I can try,” she agrees reluctantly, if only because Jumin’s doing most of the rest of the work and she hates burdening him. That’s another strange thing about being human—the capacity to _burden_ people.

“I’ll leave it to you, then,” he says.

Despite the discomfort of the chill air, Rem still finds it regrettable to wear a coat outside. The sensation of being cold hasn’t stopped being new even though she’s been human more than a decade now. The biting feeling in her skin, the ache of her bones, the dryness and teetering at the edge of collapse into the ever punishing snow—unfamiliar, unpleasant, and yet the extremity of it is more than anything she’d ever known for thousands of years, so it’s not entirely unwelcome. Excess could always kill humans—too much cold, too much heat, too much love, though that last one could kill anybody.

She and Jumin part at the school gates when his chauffeur arrives, saying their goodbyes with puffs of mist in the air. Usually she rides home with him in the shiny black car, but today she’s going to lunch with Yunseo.

Yunseo moved out years ago, barely even a week after her graduation from high school. She’d secretly been packing her things up to leave for almost a month prior, and their parents didn’t notice until she announced that she was going. As far as Jihyun knows, Yunseo hasn’t spoken to them since then, but twice a week she picks Jihyun up from school to go for lunch together. Yunseo never told Jihyun to keep it a secret from their parents. She didn’t need to.

Jihyun removes his glove for a moment to check the time on his phone. Yunseo wouldn’t be here for another fifteen minutes, so Rem traces the perimeter of the school to the garden. Most of the plants can’t be maintained in the winter, but there’s a bush whose red berries can be seen poking up through the snow that might look nice in a photo for she and Jumin’s project. She fumbles a little to open the camera app with her numbing fingers.

It feels strange to photograph something other than a person, circling the bush for different angles as she’d seen some photographers do with Misa, unsure if this is actually necessary for a bush that looks more or less the same on all sides. She lowers herself to one knee, snow soaking through her black uniform pants as she takes a photo from below. This feels awfully silly.

Once her fingers feel like they’ll lose all sensation if she takes any more photos, she replaces her glove and moves the phone to her clumsier right hand to check the camera roll.

One, two, three… nine different photos of the same bush, and Rem finds her breath hitching as she scrolls through them and at a loss to explain why. This bush with the red berries, the same one she’d seen months ago in this same place but bare of snow, small flower buds blossoming in the sun of spring, now one sole sign of life in the winter whiteness.

She starts when she hears the honk of a car, running back around to the school gates where her sister’s car is parked. Yunseo’s car is silver, professional, not as expensive as the others in the parking lot but not looking entirely out of place, either.

Yunseo laughs when Jihyun crashes with a pant and red cheeks into the passenger seat. “Were you waiting outside?” she asks.

Jihyun nods mutely.

“You know I always come at the exact same time,” Yunseo says, looking over her shoulder as she backs out of the lot. “You should’ve waited inside so you don’t get sick.”

The school seems to get smaller as they drive away, pulling onto the main streets to go toward downtown. Yunseo loves downtown, with the tall buildings and bright lights and people everywhere. When she lived with them, she’d sometimes ask their parents why the family never went downtown together, but their parents would only exchange knowing glances and change the subject. The university is in the middle of the city, though, and Yunseo’s lived in various different apartments in the area over the last ten years.

Rem wonders if they’ll be meeting anyone else when they arrive at the bistro Yunseo likes. Introducing her brother to people seems to be a hobby of hers, colleagues and old college friends shaking his hand and telling him they’ve heard a lot about him. Jihyun has no idea what Yunseo could possibly be telling them, given that his biggest accomplishment thus far is that he’s friends with Jumin Han, and he hasn’t told Yunseo about that.

“I’m trying to create opportunities for you,” Yunseo said once. “Networking is important, and I don’t want you to have to struggle with that on your own.”

Unlike Yunseo, Rem is not ambitious and likely has no use for networks, but Yunseo’s friends are kind and she smiles a lot when she’s with them, so she doesn’t mind.

“It’s just the two of us today,” Yunseo says, pushing open the little restaurant door and letting Jihyun walk in first. “Actually, I have something to tell you.”

The ‘actually’ makes Jihyun’s heart speed a little, momentarily forgetting how to greet the host who seats them. For the first few minutes, it’s silent.

“How’s school?” Yunseo asks, forcing Rem to shift her focus away from the water she’d been very carefully sipping.

“It’s fine,” she answers. She doesn’t understand why humans ask questions like this. Most of them aren’t genuinely interested, though in Yunseo’s case Rem supposes it’s possible she really does want to know.

“That’s good,” Yunseo says. “Doing well in school is important.”

Rem’s not sure she’d describe herself as doing _well_ in school, though she’s not failing anything either.

Yunseo takes the lack of response as an invitation to launch into an overview of her life since the last time they’d met. She describes that her company had just completed the project she’d been telling Jihyun about the last few times they’d met, and recounts stories of incidents that happened at work, the sound of her raspy laugh filling the restaurant. Jihyun can’t really focus on anything she’s saying, poking through his bean sprout appetizer. Yunseo quiets when their meals are placed in front of them, speaking only to comment on how much she enjoys the food, until she’s finished about three quarters of her dish and puts down her chopsticks, lacing her fingers together under her chin.

“You’re really cute, huh?” she laughs softly, and Rem raises her head sharply to fix her in a wide-eyed stare. Yunseo laughs again. “See? You’re always so shy and quiet and you make such adorable faces.”

“… Adorable?” It’s not a word Rem would use for herself, and she’s not sure she likes it. Yunseo nods emphatically, then turns her gaze down to her bowl.

“I’m gonna miss that,” she murmurs.

“What do you mean?” Rem asks before she can stop herself, leaning closer to the table and resting her chopsticks down.

“Ah, right.” Rem raises her eyebrows, wishing Yunseo wouldn’t pretend to have forgotten and get to the point. “Well, see, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

The restaurant still bustles with people for lunchtime, conversations that can be easily overheard occurring at the tables around them, and Rem tries to calm herself by rationalizing that were it something truly dangerous Yunseo wouldn’t talk about it here.

“Well, you see,” Yunseo says slowly. “I’m moving.”

“Oh.”

Jihyun’s sister pauses, picks up her chopsticks for another bite, and then makes eye contact with Jihyun. “… to Germany.”

“Oh,” Jihyun says again. He’s almost certain that this isn’t the correct response, but the fact Rem has improved at speaking to human classmates and teachers over the years has done little to nothing in helping her learn to speak with her own family. Germany? Rem doesn’t know exactly where that is; somewhere in Europe, though, which is far. Certainly far enough that she and her sister would be unlikely to keep meeting up twice a week.

“You’re not curious why?” Yunseo asks with a grave expression, but Rem can hear amusement in her voice.

“No… uh, that is. Yes, I mean,” Rem fumbles. “I mean, why?”

Yunseo watches her carefully and Rem flushes, like if Yunseo looked any closer her skin might fall away to expose a shinigami body underneath. Uncomfortable, she reaches again for the water, but Yunseo maintains her gaze.

After Rem’s taken a few sips, Yunseo clears her throat.

“Well, I never told you this,” Yunseo starts. “But basically, a lot of the work I do involves, like… international communication. And there’s this one person I work with, who… well, you know, I added her on social media to make it easier for work.”

Rem nods. She’s done the same thing for projects before.

“Well, we ended up becoming really close friends. And then we started dating… this was all, like… six years ago.”

_Six years?_

“And… yeah. A position opened up for an international contact where she works, so I’m going to Germany to live with her. I’m probably gonna stay there for a long time.”

“Oh.”

Yunseo scratches her neck. “Obviously, I’m not planning on saying anything to our parents. I’m not gonna ask you to keep it quiet or anything if they ask about me, though, which I doubt they will. But I wanted to tell you.”

“Okay…” Rem mumbles, unsure quite how to process this. Yunseo reaches across the table to touch her shoulder and Rem nearly jumps.

“My flight is scheduled for two weeks from now, so this isn’t the last time we’ll see each other before I go,” Yunseo says. “You can save any tears and whatever for then, okay?”

She gives Jihyun a wink. Rem’s not sure she’s cried a single time in over ten years, but she nods weakly and wishes she knew what to say in this situation. Yunseo handles Jihyun’s silence with grace, perhaps used to it by now and not wanting to risk hurting their relationship during one of their last meetings by mentioning it. She changes the subject to start describing her secret girlfriend of six years to Jihyun; smart, forward-thinking, had initially moved to Germany for university, hoping to study environmental engineering and one day bring what she’d learned back to her home country. Yunseo’s eyes sparkle when she talks, and for once Jihyun finds himself completely engrossed in what the older girl is saying. The sound of her voice—melodious, excited, ready to take her things and cross the continent to be with the person she loves, determination set in her face borne from an ingenuity that could only remind Rem of one person, one person who surely wouldn’t hesitate to leave to her love’s side either. They’re sitting by a window, just as Jihyun and Jumin had been earlier that day, the gentle snowfall having started again sometime since they entered, creating the illusion that Yunseo is glowing in the yellow bistro lights, shining smile on her lips, and Rem realizes she’s fished her phone out of her coat pocket.

Yunseo watches her a moment, smile unfading as she blinks interest in what Jihyun is doing. He tucks a stray hair behind his ear, a little too long, a little overdue for a cut before spring arrives.

“Can I take your picture?”

 


	5. Arpeggio

**Thursday May 13th, 2027**

Gathered white fabric embossed with shapes shimmering silver, lace overlay knit with intricate detailing winking and glittering in the spring sunlight past Jihyun’s eyes, and for a moment Rem is transfixed before the skirts swish on past her. She hears a loud _click!_ to her right, starts, and turns to find herself face-to-lens with a rather large and expensive-looking camera.

“Oh.”

“Sorry, trying to get a picture of the groom’s son.”

“Of course,” Rem steps to the side, allowing the photographer to sink into her previous position and angle his camera toward Jumin, who’s promptly swallowed up by the crowd after the shutter sounds.

It’s Jihyun’s first wedding and Rem’s first time seeing one so close, her view from the shinigami realm corrupted by the dirty air and her lack of an invitation. Describing Chairman Han’s wedding by Rem’s experiences with spying on them would be like describing the human realm by a single apple, though, with no way to convey the gentle falling of cherry blossom petals to the raised wooden floor, the lavishly dressed women and men matching one another’s motions in sync. The ceremony earlier was in a church much grander than the one Jihyun was accustomed to attending with his family, large pillars stretching to hold up a ceiling as endless as the sky, studded with chandeliers made of what Jumin said was diamond. Jihyun was initially disappointed to leave for the reception, but the cloud of fragrances, the tall trees reminding Rem of so many streets where Misa had her photo taken, and the low chatter of people mingling beneath the symphony of a live orchestra with Jihyun’s own father seated at the grand piano make the atmosphere even greater than that of watching Jumin’s father and new step-mother take their vows, Jumin standing uneasily to the side against a backdrop of stained glass.

Jihyun is Jumin’s guest, not his father’s, invitations expressly spelling out that the party is for adults only, glasses of rosé dangling from long manicured fingers. Jumin told Jihyun he doesn’t enjoy large gatherings and has mixed feelings about attending at all, but skipping out on his father’s wedding wasn’t a viable option, and so he proposed that having someone his own age there would make it a better experience for him. Since arriving at the reception destination, though, Rem has hardly seen Jumin at all. The latter had tried his best at first to return to Jihyun for conversation while mingling with his father’s guests, but gave up after forty-five minutes of barely managing two-liners between being grabbed by the arm and dragged off again.

Rem is content to stand alone, though, turning her gaze on the flowing gowns and wondering how they feel brushing delicately against the women’s legs. Being a human male is similar to being a shinigami in this sense, and she adjusts the blue bowtie at her neck, thinking of the jewelry she used to own.

“Aren’t they so darling?” Rem glances to her left to see a woman looking out at the scene. She looks slightly younger than Yunseo, black curls pinned close to her scalp and fringe cascading to frame her cheekbones. “The bride and groom, I mean,” she clarifies, and Rem diverts her attention to where the Chairman and his wife have arranged themselves in seats at the front, sharing murmurs and watching the people dance below. “They look so in love.”

“They do look lovely,” Rem agrees, noting the damask detailing of Jumin’s father’s lapels and the glimmer of the bride’s silver dusted arms as she moves closer to him, elegant, refined. Jumin told Rem he doesn’t mind this girlfriend so far, that he thinks there might be some hope for his father since he actually wants to commit to her this time. Rem herself doesn’t have much of an opinion, hasn’t spoken to the woman at all other than to congratulate her once at the start of the ceremony, but she does know she’s beautiful with amber eyes and a prominent jaw.

“Do you know their family?” the guest asks. “Actually, aren’t you sort of young to be here? It seems like the only other underage person here is his son… oh, but maybe you just look young. Sorry for assuming.”

“No, that is correct, I’m—”

“Gosh, I’m rambling, aren’t I,” the woman fusses with one of the curls at the side of her face. “I’ve never been to a party this fancy before, you know. I hear the Chairman’s New Years party is a big deal, but I only just started working for the company in April so I haven’t been to one of those yet. It’s honestly a little overwhelming.”

“I can imagine,” Rem sympathizes.

“I hear that the Chairman is super easy to get close to,” she prattles on, and as she launches into a spiel of gossip about Jumin’s father’s company, Jihyun realizes that his conversation partner isn’t looking for a response from him at all. This happens bizarrely often, considering that so much of Rem’s early life as Jihyun Kim was spent being told he should speak up more. Since starting middle school, whether during group projects or at lunch breaks where Jumin somehow gets caught up in business calls with his father on his phone for the entire period, Jihyun’s classmates, teachers, fellow churchgoers, and now, apparently, wedding guests he’s never met before are inclined to divulge their grievances, goings-on, and even secrets to him for some reason Rem can’t pinpoint.

“Your eyes are sincere,” Jumin offered as explanation one day when Jihyun brought it up, but that hardly clarifies anything. Eyes exist to see, not to convey. More likely, she became experienced with listening to the thoughts of others when she descended from the shinigami realm and became Misa’s and then Higuchi’s confidante.

Other than the fact the content of most people’s thoughts are irredeemably boring, Jihyun doesn’t mind, and when C&R International’s new employee tells him she’s going to visit the appetizer table, he starts moving from his position on the edge of the dance floor to engage with the various guests attending the party. Staring in awe at extravagance most of the attendees are used to makes Jihyun more consipicuous, after all, than talking to people does, and taking photos on her phone of the stunning ensembles she’s been so fascinated by all afternoon without permission even more so; the least she can do is give out compliments.

“You look like an angel,” she says, recalling words a photographer once said to Misa during a photo shoot. The woman stands tall, shoulders broad and square under an airy pink dress. She smiles brightly, confirming to Rem that this is a worthwhile activity as she moves on to the next person.

“You’re quite the handsome lad yourself,” one guest tells Jihyun, peering down at him above a long necklaced throat, glued-down jewels decorating her cheeks.

“Thank you,” Rem replies.

“And so polite—”

“Have you offered him champagne?” someone calls over, and Rem turns her head to see a woman with a tray balancing on her hand walking over to them.

“He’s underage, dear.”

“Oh!” the server blushes. “My mistake—”

“Where’s the Chairman?” another person interrupts. “I’d like to give him my greetings before—”

“He’s on the dance floor, of course, with his son—”

Jumin’s dark hair bobs lowly between people moving left and right in Jihyun’s peripheral, a burst of laughter, the sound of glass shattering and bubbling gold drink spills near Jihyun’s shoe and Jumin is gone.

“I am so sorry—”

“Well, it is a wedding!”

“But still—”

“May I have this dance, love?” Jihyun turns around, a woman in a red dress covers her mouth, laughs, and looks away shyly.

“Love, then—” she says—

“I can’t believe they’re not serving _vodka_.” Hair styled up to such a height it looks as though it might fall over.

“Bonhwa, come say hello before you leave!”

The sun traverses lower across the sky, bright blue becomes deeper, scent of flowers, women’s conditioner, eyelids painted carnation and cerulean.

High-heeled shoes step into place, crossing, never colliding, Jihyun turns around and nearly stumbles over his own feet.

“Say you want to dance—”

“You couldn’t _pay_ me to dance with him!”

“Oh, but have you ever been to his house? He has a bookcase taller than—”

Loud gasp. “Where did you put the maejakgwa?”

“No, she just turned twenty-five—”

“Would you like a glass of ice water?”

The glass is cold and wet in Rem’s hand and she steps, gracefully, gratefully, away from the floor, away from the noise, across the grass. The cool air hits her face and she continues on, looking for something stable, looking for something to lean on—

She stumbles backwards over a step and turns to catch herself on the gazebo railing, a tuft of black hair below her nearly colliding with her nose.

“Jumin?”

Jihyun’s friend sits, knees crammed to his chest, back pressed up against slatted gate wall. His palms are pressed into his eyes, breath shallow, folded like wings tucked in and away. Jihyun scrambles below, lowers one knee to the floor and props himself up with the other.

“Jumin, are you all right?”

Jumin is silent, and Jihyun’s heart hammers in his chest, glass in his hand chilling through his skin. He takes a breath and wills himself to focus. He’s seen this before, his father sitting with his hands pressed over his ears because they forgot to close the windows when their car reached the highway, mother reaching to yank the steering wheel so they can pull to the side before the black minivan behind them can crash their car, mumbling “Right, of course, we forgot the traffic,” reaching behind her beside Jihyun’s feet to grab a bottle of—

“Do you need water?” Jihyun asks, and extends the glass in his hand toward his friend. Jumin shakes into his sigh and Jihyun bites his lip, shifting into a sitting position at Jumin’s side. He shouldn’t have left Jumin alone, should’ve anticipated something would go wrong that would result in this. But then— what could it be? Jihyun peers up over the railing and sees his father still seated behind the piano, filling the air with his music even as the sounds of the party grow ever louder.

Was it the noise? The colours? The scents, the dizzying motion of guests weaving steps across the floor? Or perhaps someone said something, or perhaps someone did something to hurt him, and heat rises to Jihyun’s cheeks, awareness of the fragility of the glass in his hand overcoming him as he considers the—

“Jihyun?” A small voice.

“Yes, it’s me,” Rem breathes, hearing her human name tumble from her friend’s lips. “Are you all right? Did something happen?”

“No. Well... actually.”

Jumin heaves another inhale and Jihyun gestures again with the water. “Drink this,” he says, and Jumin grasps the cup, drains it of its contents, and sets it down with a clink of the ice.

Jihyun waits, one moment, two, then tentatively moves to touch Jumin’s shoulder.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Jumin says, and Jihyun looks down at the hand Jumin smacked away, pulling it slowly back.

“It’s all right,” Jihyun reassures him, and then sinks back against the wall again and resolves to shut his mouth.

The noise drifting from where the others celebrate grates even as it’s muted, notes jumbling together nonsensically in Jihyun’s head even knowing his father was so careful and calculating in crafting them. Jihyun breathes, deep and practiced as Jumin reshuffles his position to arrange his legs below him, chest rising and falling in a tempo too fast.

Rem looks up when his hand closes over hers, cold and a little— damp, almost.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Rem says, “It’s all right.”

With his other hand, Jumin reaches up, looks about to tousle his precisely styled hair and then thinks better of it, running it down his face to his chin instead.

“I don’t know why this happened,” he confesses, and Rem nods.

“I understand,” she claims, though she’s not sure she does, and Jumin nods back at her, small bob in his throat as he swallows.

“I was— I was talking, no—”

He falls silent.

“It’s all right,” she repeats, watches him hang his head low so she can’t see his eyes. His jaw clenches so tight the pulse in his cheek is observable, and Rem wants to _do_ something, to fix this, to have this be easy for him— “Can I touch you?”

The request spells itself out before she understands why she’s making it.

The pulsing stops, and Jumin turns his studious gaze on her. Her chest alights, nerves rolling over her skin, stiffness of the dress shirt becoming even stiffer, as if he’s going to burn holes through her, as if she’s going to melt, or crumble and flake away—

“I don’t… know,” he says, and Rem shakes herself from her trance to nod. Jumin’s grasp on Rem’s hand between them firms slightly, and she realizes he’s raising it to his cheek, pausing just a moment and then nesting his face against it.

“You’re warm,” Jumin comments.

“You haven’t felt my other hand,” says Jihyun.

“Why, what’s wrong with your other hand?” Jumin murmurs, gingers his fingers against Jihyun’s dorsal.

“It was holding the ice water.”

Jumin snorts, and it’s a nice sound. His gold cufflinks reflect in his silver eyes, pale lips cast in the shadow of Jihyun’s touch, and he takes a steady breath. “How did you know where to find me?” he asks.

“I didn’t,” Jihyun admits, and Jumin’s eyes meet his. “I came here for some air, and found you were here too.”

“Thank God for needing air, then,” Jumin proclaims.

“I’m sorry I left you alone.”

“You didn’t,” Jumin insists. “I left you.”

“You were taken,” Jihyun corrects him, and Jumin laughs.

“I was taken,” he agrees. His smile lingers on his face another moment, and then dissipates into a memory. He shuts his eyes again.

Jihyun’s arm starts to grow stiff, but that’s fine, and he looks across the gazebo to where a couple speak together by the opening. The party isn’t over yet, not even close, but there seems to be a lull as the attendees settle into the pattern of it. Jihyun can’t see the main floor from here, but there’s not much there that he particularly wants to look at, right now.

“People were touching my,” Jumin speaks, and Jihyun turns to face him again, “hair,” mouth vibrates against Jihyun’s palm, “and my face, too,” a sigh, “and my shoulders, and…” he trails off, long eyelashes pointed toward the floor. “I suppose it’s normal, as we were dancing.”

His words are foreign to each other, slotted together like puzzle pieces from different boxes rather than the deliberate and precise selection Jihyun’s come to expect from him. Jumin quiets, and Jihyun wonders if it’s his cue to say something, offer some kind of comfort.

Jumin mumbles, “I just don’t like it when a lot of people I don’t know touch me, I suppose.”

“That’s reasonable,” Rem tells him, and it occurs to her to wonder when she gained any authority to asses what is and is not reasonable human behaviour. Jumin shrugs.

“I just don’t want to have to go back there,” he laments. “I don’t want to…”

“Then don’t,” Rem tells him, brushes her thumb against his cheek.

Jumin frowns. “I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Rem urges, and maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t. But it doesn’t matter, when Jumin is this upset.

“I don’t want to,” he mumbles.

Rem moves her other hand, tilts Jumin’s chin up. He stares at her, transfixed, and she wills herself not to look away.

“You don’t have to,” she asserts.

Jumin takes another breath. “Stay with me?”

“I only came here for you,” Jihyun reminds him.

“Thank you,” Jumin says.

They sit for a few minutes in silence before tension slowly melts away, music drifting toward she and Jumin symphonic once again, smell of sweets and appetizers mixing with perfumes like they’re from another world. Jihyun tells Jumin jokes Rem remembers Misa telling, and Jumin talks to Jihyun about his latest research subject— textiles, which he’s _been_ talking to Jihyun about for the past three weeks. Jihyun’s suit is linen. Jumin’s is silk and wool, and the dresses below are chiffon, silk, satin—brocade, mostly, some lamé, Jumin’s eye for detail never faulting him even once.

“They’re so beautiful,” Jihyun says.

“They’re all right,” Jumin agrees. The servers catch on to Jihyun and Jumin’s gathering place and bring them virgin cocktails, which Jumin downs enthusiastically.

“I wonder what these are _supposed_ to taste like,” he muses. “Since they’re so excellent as is.”

“Alcohol is terrible,” Rem tells him, thinking of Higuchi, his languid and leering gaze, his gruff and belligerent shouts.

“Well, that depends on the alcohol,” Jumin replies. “Some taste better than others, and the content level in any given drink can differ.” Jihyun prepares himself to be taught about all the different types of alcohol Jumin is familiar with, but a wrinkle forms between his brows. “… I suppose I should return to the dance floor.”

Jihyun watches him. “Are you all right with that?” Jumin places his glass on the floor.

“I don’t particularly have a choice,” he says. “Though sitting here with you is extremely preferable… but perhaps if I somehow dodge the people trying to make me dance it shouldn’t be so bad?”

That’s what he did before, while all those people felt entitled to grasp at him and whisk him off, and then touch his hair, and his face, and his shoulders, and Rem remembers Misa in Higuchi’s car, remembers her meaningful glance at Rem, her reliance on Rem’s protection, the certainty in her voice when she said, _If you try anything, I’ll kill you_ , and pretended to pull paper from her purse.

“I’ll dance with you.”

“What?”

“… I said I’ll dance with you, and I won’t let anyone else.”

Silence not silence, crescendo overhead, piano, violin, one song melting into the next song and the voices, frantic voices, voices just bursting with unimportant drivel to say to any ear that will listen, or not listen, or pretend to listen—

“So I can blame my clingy escort, then, for hogging me,” Jumin grins, Jumin lights up, Jumin gives warmth to the earth and all its glitter-decked and cold inhabitants, spilling forth from Jihyun’s chest onto his face into a matching smile, “Exactly.”

“Weeeell, I suppose I have no choice, then,” Jumin stands with exaggerated weariness and pulls Jihyun with him to his feet.

“No choice at all,” Jihyun agrees, and for a moment they simply look at each other, hand in ruffled sleeve-decorated hand, two people moving as one to descend gazebo steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. There's a point in the series when Misa isn't in possession of a Death Note, but is aware that she once had one. She ends up getting in a car with Kyosuke Higuchi, who actually _does_ have a Death Note, while Rem is in the car with them. Misa pretends to Higuchi that she still has a Death Note and depends on _Rem_ to do any actual killing for her if the need arises. At one point during this car ride, Higuchi physically harasses Misa.
> 



	6. Persona

**June 2028**

Jihyun does not technically live at school. This is a detail that’s more or less negligible, the sound of Jumin’s car horn beeping outside to remind Jihyun that it is exactly 4:57 a.m., and that once again he’s taken too much precious time spreading butter over the pain de campagne his parents seem to always have in the house even when they’re out travelling, moved too slowly pulling uniform-standard socks over his feet as the sun rose outside his window.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says, crashing into the back seat, and Jumin says, “Sometimes I think if we didn’t pick you up each morning, you’d never come to school at all.”

“I would come,” Jihyun insists, faux offense mocking itself across his features. “I’d simply be…”

“Late,” Jumin fills in, rolling his eyes. “You’d show up for your photography class, then get lost in the hallways and fail to attend anything else.”

“The art room is easier to locate than our classes,” Jihyun says, but then Jumin raises his eyebrows at him and Jihyun is left with no choice but to look away. “… I concede.”

“Heh,” Jumin smirks, and Jihyun smiles privately to the streets moving ever quickly outside his window. There are some benefits to spending all his time at school: being surrounded by students is preferable to being alone at home. Jihyun’s name is spoken often enough in the hallways, generally in relation to Jumin, but his classmates are eager enough to engage him in their conversations even if they don’t invite him to coffee afterwards.

Besides that, though, there’s the photography teacher, a woman of perhaps thirty years. Jihyun had initially enrolled in the course out of simple curiosity, but on the first day of classes, Ms. Jong gave him an appraising once-over and declared, “I like the look in your eye.” She waited patiently when Jihyun’s hands were shaking too much to handle the camera, this tool Rem had seen others use so many times in this life and the last, the tool she’d been mimicking use of with her phone since an afternoon in middle school. In retrospect, it seems silly, if Rem had ever asked for a camera her parents would surely have provided it, but the thought hadn’t occurred to her— not like that.

She pointed the lens at her teacher, and Ms. Jong smiled when Jihyun closed his finger over the shutter. Since then, he’s acquired a camera of his own, a semi-permanent fixture around his neck as he sits with Jumin in study halls and attempts to help others in his night classes with questions he barely understands himself.

For his birthday, Jumin gives him a corkboard, and at Jihyun’s questioning tilt of the head Jumin says, “You don’t have anywhere to put those photos you’re always taking, and I know you won’t think to buy one for yourself.”

He doesn’t mean it as an insult, and Jihyun doesn’t take it as one. Dew on the branches of early April, close shots of Jumin— his hands, the place where his striped shirt collar meets his neck, and now the sun-bleached grass and flowers in an array of colours fully bloomed decorate the once-bare walls of a bedroom he hardly spends any time in.

Ms. Jong has perfect posture, wears her hair in a bun atop her head that never seems to fall out of place as she flits about the studio, nods approval, asks questions of students, and raises her hands to frame imaginary shots.

“I hear she has a tattoo,” Ahn whispers to Jihyun, pencil sketches and eraser dust cluttering her workspace. “On her hip, that’s what Sung-min told me. She hides it under the long shirts, but he saw it peeking out once, he said.”

Decorating one’s body with artwork; it’s one of the most beautiful ventures Rem imagines a human can undertake, and when she lets the word ‘tattoo’ slip into conversation with her teacher late after class one day, Ms. Jong agrees.

“It may not look very professional, but I think all art is a form of expression,” Ms. Jong says.

“What does photography express?” Jihyun asks, and Ms. Jong pauses for a moment, touches the pen she’s stored behind her ear in thought.

“What do you think it expresses?” she asks, and Rem is much worse at answering questions than asking them. But lingering in her dreams is Misa’s smile in the photos on her internet browser, the way the sun reflects on mountains in the early morning, the shimmering fabric of gowns in the photos Jumin gave Rem of his father’s wedding because he didn’t want them.

Jihyun’s face is blemished, as are the faces of many others in his year. Not Jumin’s though— Jumin has a _dermatologist_ , and though he’s offered Rem the opportunity to see his several times, she’s not certain even with all her parents’ money it’s worth approaching them about. Light Yagami never had any, that Rem is aware, even though he was only just emerging into adulthood when she knew him, and neither did Misa— but Misa had an elaborate routine, strawberry-scented scrub that Rem can’t appreciate properly until she’s at the mall with Jumin one day, taking turns sniffing the different fragrances in the store.

“I suppose you like that one?” Jumin asks, and Jihyun pauses, candle still at his nose.

He closes his eyes and inhales again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think I like it… but that may just be because it reminds me of someone.”

Jumin reaches over and gently takes the candle from Rem’s hand to smell it himself. “Who?” he asks, wrinkling his nose just a little before taking another whiff. “Hmm. This is all right.”

“You don’t know her,” Jihyun says, and Jumin sets the candle back on the shelf.

“I forgot you know people I don’t know,” he says, and Jihyun laughs, maybe because Jumin has no idea, maybe because Jumin is right.

“I think my favourite is the one that’s meant to smell like the sea,” Rem says, and her friend nods his approval.

Jumin likes the scent of pomegranates, the look of vertical stripes, the sound of music that employs cellos— often regardless of genre. He reads avidly— nonfiction mostly, though he enjoys the occasional light fiction novel, and he can guess to Jihyun the probable ingredients of the marinade for any given steak after a single bite.

Rem looks at the photographs on her wall, the simple monochrome shirts and coats of her wardrobe, the carefully bundled and string-tied envelopes of every letter Jumin ever sent her. Ms. Jong’s black heels click across the floor, Sayeon’s phone charms dangle from the zipper on her backpack, her mother’s paintings decorate the walls of every corridor in her home, and when Rem opens the door to Jumin’s car to spend her entire day at school, he says, “You’re late,” and Ms. Jong says, “I like the look in your eye,” and Min-a says, “Thanks for being such a good listener,” and Seojun says, “How do you get your hair to wave that gently?,” and when she looks at them, they look back at her.

“I have to go to a dinner tomorrow,” Jumin sighs, dropping his books in a neat stack on the desk before their night class starts, and then takes the seat beside Jihyun. “And I can’t decide on a stupid tie to wear.”

Seojun stands straight from where he’d been leaning on Jihyun’s desk. “I’ll talk to you later I guess,” he says. “Text me about it, though, maybe?”

“Did I interrupt something?” Jumin apologizes.

“Class is about to start anyway,” Seojun shrugs, and Jihyun promises to send him the message, though Rem isn’t sure explaining that she combs her fingers through her hair until it arranges itself into something that looks deliberate will be much help to him.

“What kind of dinner is it?” she asks Jumin, and Jumin presses his fingers to his eyelids.

“I’m meeting with a business partner of my father’s, I believe,” he says. Jumin doesn’t technically work for C&R International yet, but this is a regular occurrence. He describes his father’s insistence on involving him with the business before he’s graduated high school as “being offered opportunities.” Rem has had enough with opportunists, but Jumin’s relationship with his father isn’t for her to question.

“Try green this time,” she suggests, and Jumin pauses for a moment.

“Which one?”

“The one that alternates with silver,” she says. “It’ll look nice with your eyes.”

“All my ties look nice on me,” Jumin tells her, but agrees to take her advice as the lesson starts.

Ms. Jong adjusts Jihyun’s hands with hers to suggest better angles, apologizes when she finds him alone in the darkroom, though she couldn’t possibly have ruined his photo with the sliver of light she let in before quickly shutting the door. She leans back in her seat and waits as Rem tries to gather her thoughts, gesticulating with her arms to try to describe the images in her head that she can’t draw or speak, only capture on camera. Ms. Jong nods, and Jihyun’s exhales cleanse through his system.

“I’m thinking of dying my hair,” he tells Ms. Jong one day.

“Oh?” she asks, and Jihyun pauses a moment, then nods. Rem’s hair— the closest to hair she could get, once— was pink, and ugly, and as Rem lies awake in Jihyun’s bed at an hour she knows is going to make her late on Jumin again in the morning, she thinks it was one of her favourite things about her old appearance.

“It’s not expressly forbidden in the regulations for this school,” he explains, and Ms. Jong smiles.

“They might make it so if you dye it, you know.”

Jihyun shrugs, but that doesn’t relieve the feeling that something is weighing on his shoulders.

“Dye it,” Ms. Jong tells him.

Perhaps he should’ve brought Jumin with him, pushing open the door to a small hairdressing shop in the mall. The people in the pictures on the window smile less convincingly than Misa used to, or else tilt their chins away from the camera, eyes hooded and lips pursed in a grimace. The Internet was some help in recommending this place as somewhere she could access using public transport, but the advice she found on bleaching and dying hair were all things she already knew from watching Misa turn her hair blonde.

The first thing to hit Jihyun is the smell, soapy and fresh, hairdressers moving around carrying scissors like the teachers in Kindergarten always said not to. The clients are of all ages, relaxing in dryer chairs and describing their desired cuts. The customer closest to the door looks around sixty years old with a magazine grasped in her wrinkled, manicured hands.

“Can I help you?”

The man behind the counter dries his hands and then folds the towel into a perfect square, laying it down next to a computer mouse without taking his sharp, green eyes off Jihyun the entire time. Jihyun can see the faintest hint of brown behind the contact lenses, exactly like Misa’s were.

“I was hoping to bleach and dye my hair,” Jihyun tells him, and the man types something into his computer.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes,” Jihyun says. “I was told Hae-il would be available?”

The man smiles. “That’s me.” His hair is short, sleek, a silver that absorbs the lights of the shop instead of reflecting them. He asks Jihyun a few more questions, and Jihyun realizes he forgot to choose a colour to dye his hair _to_. Hae-il tells Jihyun it’d be better to bleach it after he’s chosen a colour so they know how light to go with it, but he’s already here and doesn’t want to wait anymore.

“Well, if you want it really light, you’ll have a few days to decide, I suppose,” Hae-il says, leading Jihyun to a chair positioned in front of a mirror. Jihyun squints for a moment under the harsh lights. “I can make it any colour you want, probably.”

Jihyun believes him. The shop’s website lists that Hae-il’s work has been featured in many magazines throughout the years since starting as a stylist, and Jihyun doubts even Misa would’ve been able to afford him without some great effort. Hae-il nods approvingly when Jihyun tells him his budget, and while it’s not a habit of his to make extravagant purchases, this feels important somehow. Hae-il places a booklet of colours in Jihyun’s hands to flip through while he does his hair.

Hae-il doesn’t talk much when he’s working, his eyes focused and intent, cutting strands of hair away with a precision that reminds Rem of Jumin. Occasionally he catches Jihyun staring at his hands in the mirror and gives him a small smile that makes Jihyun’s cheeks go red, much more red than Jihyun would ever give them permission to.

“Your hair is really nice,” Hae-il comments. “Thick, healthy.”

The bleach feels strange against his scalp, not really stinging but not exactly pleasant either, and Hae-il is impressed with how light Jihyun’s hair goes once they’ve washed it out and blow-dried it.

“Your hair is pretty dark, so I thought we might need two or three sessions, but I actually think depending on the colour we should be able to put it on today,” Hae-il says. “Or, well… _I_ can, anyway.”

His confident grin makes Jihyun laugh, running a finger through his now-yellow hair in awe. His reflection looks like a different person, his skin less pale, his blush deeper.

… Great.

“Have you decided on a colour?”

“Um.”

His finger is on the page in the booklet with the different shades of pink listed, but now that he’s being asked to make a decision, he’s not so sure. He glances at Hae-il, who’s rolled a chair over to sit beside him. The other man’s back is straight, nails painted plum.

“I feel something toward the colour, I guess,” Jihyun tells him, tracing his finger over the page. “Like it was important to me once, in another life.”

Hae-il watches him carefully. “And what about this life?”

Jihyun sucks in a breath, and Hae-il stands. “Well, no rush.”

Jihyun’s already been here for hours. Six hours, to be precise, though it doesn’t feel nearly that long. Time in the human world never feels very long, though.

He picks up his phone. Maybe he should ask Jumin— no, he doesn’t want Jumin to know he’s doing this, and Jumin’s even worse than Jihyun is at making colour-related decisions, anyway. He looks up at his reflection.

His eyes are still his most striking feature, their blue the most colourful part of his face at the moment. As a shinigami, her eyes were yellow, like caution tape, or a more highly saturated version of what her hair looks like right now. The blue is pale, almost green, like the sea-scented candle beside her bed, the one she’d chosen to take home after almost three entire minutes of sniffing the one that reminded her so much of Misa.

Her chest squeezes and she looks down again, absently flipping through the pinks back into the purples, and then to blue.

Jihyun raises his head and signals for Hae-il to return.


End file.
